People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist)

Vol. XXXIII

No.
29

July
19, 2009

YASH
PAL COMMITTEE
REPORT

Prescriptions
Not For Renovation

And Rejuvenation Of Higher Education

Vijender
Sharma

THE
Yash Pal Committee
was constituted as a Review Committee to review the functioning of
UGC/AICTE in
February 2008. Later on in October 2008, its name was changed as the
Committee
to Advise on Renovation
and Rejuvenation of Higher Education, but
with no change in its terms of reference. The committee has submitted
its
report to the minister of human resource development, Kapil Sibal on
June 24,
2009.

This
report has gone much beyond its terms of its reference and is a self
contradictory document. Some of its recommendations are no different
from those
of other committees which lead to high fees and privatisation and
commercialisation of higher education.

ON
STATE

FINANCING

A
university is
perceived as a means to “overcome caste and class hierarchy, patriarchy
and
other cultural prejudices and also as a source of new knowledge and
skills, a
space for creativity and innovations.” Therefore, the committee stated
in its
report that higher education “was and
continues to be considered a national responsibility and the State has
to make
necessary provisions to realize its potentials.”

However,
recognising
that the cost of providing quality education is increasing and the State cannot walk away from its
responsibility of financing higher education, the committee recommended
that “imaginative ways will have to be devised to
find complementary sources of funds. Universities and other
academic
institutions should be able to hire
professional fund raisers and professional investors to attract funding
from
non-government sources.” (emphasis mine)

The
‘imaginative ways’
of fund raising and the need to have fund raising officers have been
suggested
in detail by the infamous concept paper for the Model Act for all the
universities issued by the UGC in October 2003. The ‘imaginative ways’
and
other provisions contained therein actually meant privatisation and
commercialisation of higher education (See People’s Democracy dated
December 21 & 28, 2003, and
July 25, 2004). Under
strong opposition of the students and teachers, the
proposed Model Act concept paper was withdrawn, but various government
committees continued to recommend the same. Once this recommendation of
the
Yash Pal committee is implemented, the provisions of the Model Act
would get
revived.

No
student should be
turned away from an institution for want of funds for education.
However, the
committee noted, “Absence of differential fee has led to subsidisation
of a
segment of student body that can afford to pay for its education. There
is no
reason why both these two categories of students be placed on the same
level
when it comes to financing their education.” Differential fee structure
has been
opposed by students all along. Today a large majority of students
cannot afford
the present fee and 90 per cent of our youth (17-23 years age group)
are
outside the universities and institutions of higher education. Even out
of
those students who took admission at Class I, only 16.6 per cent (2005
figures)
reach Class XII. If no student is to be “turned away from an
institution for
want of funds for education”, then the education has to be entirely
funded by
the State.

The
committee further
opined that “Guaranteed
student loans at low interest rates for those who can take loans and
free
education for those who cannot afford it at all will be necessary to
educate India.”
If loan
is to be taken, at howsoever low interest rate, for paying fees and
other charges,
then the structure of ‘fees and other charges’ will not be same as it
exists
today even in central universities like Delhi University and Jawaharlal
Nehru
University. These will include many more types of expenses which are
presently
borne by the State, raising the actual charges to be taken from the
students
several times over. This recommendation of Yash Pal Committee is
contrary to
its intention.

PROFESSIONAL
AND

VOCATIONAL
EDUCATION

At
the undergraduate level students should be exposed to various
disciplines like
humanities, social sciences, aesthetics etc., in an integrated manner.
This
should be irrespective of the discipline they would like to specialise
in,
whether general or professional higher education like medicine,
engineering,
etc. Therefore, the committee recommended that professional
institutions, including IITs and IIMs, should be returned to
universities in a
complete administrative and academic sense by abolishing intermediary
licensing
bodies. Such a measure will open the possibility of new kinds of
course-designing for professional learning in all fields from
management and
architecture to medicine and engineering. Whether the IITs and IIMs
should be
returned to universities or not requires an intense, informed debate.
The role
played by them cannot be undermined.

The
committee has made a
very important recommendation about vocational education which has
remained
under-developed as it is perceived to be largely for the poor, who
either
cannot afford academic education or who pass out of poorly-equipped and
uninspiring schools with low marks. Students who go for vocational and
technical education after completing higher secondary education are
deprived of
any possibility of pursuing higher education after completing their
vocational or
technical training. Therefore, the committee recommended that this
sector
should be brought under the purview of
universities and necessary accreditation to the courses available in
polytechnics, industrial training institutions (ITIs), etc. should be
provided.
Additionally the barriers to entry into universities for students going
through
vocational training should be lowered to enable them to upgrade their
knowledge
base at any stage of their careers. This has been a longstanding
aspiration and
demand of the students studying in ITIs and polytechnics. This
recommendation,
if implemented, will certainly help these students wishing to return to
universities and institutions of higher education for degree programmes
without
wasting the time they spent in these institutions.

ON
STATE UNIVERSITIES

AND
COLLEGES

“The
development of all
young people, be they in state-run institutions or central
institutions, is a
national responsibility and there cannot be any discrimination between
the two.
All the facilities given to central universities should be made
available to
the state universities. To achieve this, state governments would need
to
significantly enhance their support to the universities while the
centre should
make matching incentivising allocations available in a sense of a joint
national enterprise.” Qualitative development of the colleges should be
the
priority. The committee stated that money needs to be made available
for the
qualitative development of colleges.

The
state governments
have been demanding increased funds for the development of their
universities
and colleges. The UPA government should make funds available to states
for
expansion, development and strengthening of higher education.

ON
PRIVATE

HIGHER
EDUCATION

The
Yash Pal committee
has noted all the ills of private higher education institutions which
we have
also been highlighting in these columns and demanding a comprehensive
legislation to bring them under social control. The committee noted
that there
had been no guidelines to assess the competence of private investors to
run
technical institutions.

The
committee
forthrightly reports, “In many private educational institutions, the
appointment of teachers is made at the lowest possible cost. They are
treated
with scant dignity, thereby turning away competent persons from opting
for the
teaching profession. A limited number of senior positions are filled at
attractive salaries, especially from other reputed institutions, mainly
for
prestige. Otherwise, there are many terrible instances of faculty being
asked
to work in more than one institution belonging to the management; their
salary
being paid only for nine months; actual payments being much less than
the
amount signed for; impounding of their certificates and passports;
compelling
them to award pass marks in the internal examination to the “favorites”
and
fail marks for students who protest illegal collections and so on.”

The
illegal capitation
fees range from: Rs 1-10 lakh for the engineering courses; Rs 20-40
lakh for
MBBS courses; Rs 5-12 lakh for dental courses; and about Rs
30,000-50,000 for
courses in arts and science colleges, depending on the demand.”

It
recommended “very
tight regulations” but not encompassing all aspects.

The
CPI(M) and other
Left parties have been demanding a comprehensive central legislation to
regulate these institutions in relation to fees, course content,
infrastructure, academic standards, management, examinations, etc. The
draft of
such legislation, though very weak in its purpose, was issued in 2005.
Despite
repeated demands from the Left, the UPA refused to take it up. It is
high time
that the UPA government brings such a legislation.

ON
DEEMED

UNIVERSITIES

The
committee expressed
its concern on the spurt in the number of newly established educational
institutes as deemed universities. “Between 2000 and 2005, 26
private-sponsored
institutions got the deemed university status. Since 2005, the number
of
private deemed universities has increased to 108. By a notification of
the UGC,
it is no longer necessary for them to use the adjective “deemed” and
they all
call themselves simply universities. In Tamilnadu alone, the number of
private
deemed universities has increased from 18 in 2007 to 35 in 2008 and
many are in
the queue. Though, the deemed universities do not have affiliating
powers, many
of them have a number of campuses spread throughout the country.”

“Between 1956 and 1990, in 35 years, only 29
institutions were granted the deemed university status. In the last 15
years,
63 institutions were declared deemed universities and particularly in
the last
5 years, 36 institutions, excluding RECs, have been notified as deemed
universities. …. the majority of these
institutes are not established with any educational purpose, and they
end up
only deluding the students”. (emphasis mine)

The
committee revealed that “some of the private universities were
professional colleges that got approval from the regulatory bodies
for university status. Immediately thereafter, they started admitting
five to six
times their intake capacity, without a corresponding increase in
faculty
strength or academic infrastructure. The classes and laboratories were
conducted at strange hours like a factory production operation.” Some
of these
universities offered to
“give ‘guaranteed’ degrees at any level,
including PhD, for a price.”

In
view of considerable misuse of the provision for DeemedUniversity
status, the committee recommended that “the granting of such status
should be
put on hold till unambiguous and rational guidelines are evolved. The
institutions, which have somehow managed to secure such status
should be given a period of three years to
develop as a university and
fulfill the prescribed accreditation norms failing which the status
given to
them would be withdrawn.”

This
recommendation is
not enough. The democratic movement, involving students, teachers,
parents and
intelligentsia, has been demanding scrapping of the deemed university
status
granted to private institutions and reverting them back as affiliated
institutions.